1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to electrical power load control systems and, more particularly, to creating customer profiles using energy consumption patterns.
2. Description of Related Art
Customer profiles are often used by systems for a variety of reasons. One reason is to promote customer loyalty. This involves keeping information about not only the customer, but about the customer's actions as well. This may include information about what the customer owns (i.e., which devices), how they are used, when they are used, etc. By mining this data, a company can more effectively select rewards for customers that give those customers an incentive for continuing to do business with the company. This is often described as customer relationship management (CRM).
Customer profile data is also useful for obtaining feedback about how a product is used. In software systems, this is often used to improve the customer/user experience or as an aid to testing. Deployed systems that have customer profiling communicate customer actions and other data back to the development organization. That data is analyzed to understand the customer's experience. Lessons learned from that analysis is used to make modifications to the deployed system, resulting in an improved system.
Customer profile data may also be used in marketing and sales. For instance, a retail business may collect a variety of information about a customer, including what customers look at on-line and inside “brick-and-mortar” stores. This data is mined to try to identify customer product preferences and shopping habits. Such data helps sales and marketing determine how to present products of probable interest to the customer, resulting in greater sales.
However, the collection of customer profile information by power utilities has been limited to customer account information. Because power utilities typically are unable to collect detailed data about what is happening inside a customer's home or business, including patterns of energy consumption by device, there has been little opportunity to create extensive customer profiles.